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Transcendence didnt do it for me, dont know what it was.
Spelunky, on the other hand, is pure brilliance. Such impressive stuff.
Battle of Wesnot, good hex based fantasy advanced wars, open source too.

ah, well, transcendence reminded me of an online game i played called "infantry zone" mixed with the aesthetics and setting of star control, so I spent a lot of time learning it because I was enamored with the style of it all. but yes, from another perspective it can be pretty dry getting into it. thankfully there's a huge mod community which varies up the gameplay a bit.

i just go turned to battle of wesnoth recently too, you should prove the link! or maybe I WILL

The one campaign, Under A Burning Sun, is absolutely brilliant as a tactical RPG. The rest is nice, but I really don't like games where a couple of poor random results force me to reload, because if all my experienced units are wiped out, that crushes my hopes of winning the campaign.

Oh well. It IS quite nice, but... the percentile hit-chance is, for me, a cause of utter frustration.

If you liked Wesnoth's mechanics, you could do worse than checking out Vantage Master. Unless it's the Writing that attracts you to Wesnoth. In which case, stay clear of VM.

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Here some older games:
Cave Story - One of the best. Side scrolling shooter/exploration game. Retro, cute, clever, fun fun fun, everyone needs to play this.Knytt Stories - Not a better game than Cave Story, but I like it more anyway. This one would rank super high on my personal list of greatest games ever. Super-simple, super-atmospheric platformer. The level-making community is still putting out levels. Here're some good ones.The Spirit Engine 2 - Side-scrolling RPG that was originally released commercially, but performed so poorly the designer made it freely available. :( One of the more interesting mutations of the JRPG battle system I've seen, very much worth a look.

At the risk of using the most obvious examples, here are two of my favorites:

1) Desktop Dungeons free version, wooo
2) The demos of the Avernum games. Sure you will not be able to finish them without paying, but the demos alone will give you 60+ hours of text-heavy RPG goodness. =P The character customization in those games is some of my favorite, simple but distinct.

Speaking of Wesnoth, I think it was the same group that also made Frogatto, which is a easy-but-nice Metroidvania-lite kind of a deal (not quite so open ended as those, it seems, but maybe I didn't play it enough). The pixel art is especially good (the only art I have liked better in recent days is Iconoclasts)

Soldat, a kind of 2D mix between Liero and insanity. Has an optional subscription, but is perfectly playable without it, and is brilliant fun, to boot. I Wanna Be The Guy is a famously bastard-hard platformer, proudly following in the ridiculous tradition of super hard platformers. It will always be dear to my heart because I can't get past the first bloody screen.
Finally, La Mulana, a metroidvania style platformer that is lovely. I am terrible at explaining things.

0space is probably one of my favorite games to come out of any of the TIGSource compos ever. It's an awesome zero gravity 'Battle Room' style fighting game for up to 4 local players. I really wish there were more games that let me jump off ceilings to knife my opponents the way 0space does. So much fun!

Soldat, a kind of 2D mix between Liero and insanity. Has an optional subscription, but is perfectly playable without it, and is brilliant fun, to boot. I Wanna Be The Guy is a famously bastard-hard platformer, proudly following in the ridiculous tradition of super hard platformers. It will always be dear to my heart because I can't get past the first bloody screen.
Finally, La Mulana, a metroidvania style platformer that is lovely. I am terrible at explaining things.

Woah uh La-Mulana is AMAZING. It also looks like some kind of prehistoric cousin of Spelunky. I'm working my way through this one now. Thanks!!

Vantage Master seems like an interesting game but christ is it ever hard. Even on the easy mode, it seems.

The manual is horrible at explaining things as only a thing written in Chinese and translated by a Kisuhali-only-speaking Dutch who never played a game in his entire life into English can be.

You want to attack critters with critters from the opposing element - the whole thing is about placing your troops and covering every possible enemy move, very much like chess.

It's a lovely game, but I admit it gets really, really hard at around map 12 if I remember correctly. (It's been a while.)

For strategy games, I remain a fan of Titans of Steel (Warring Suns), which is official freeware since 2004 or 2005 and is as indie as it gets. Turn-based Mechwarrior with 1 second turns and a rather nice RPG and development system.

Mhmm. I just convinced myself to start a new squad in ToS. Damn. NO TIME.

NETWORKING 101 SIGNATURE INCOMING
Playing games with each other makes for the best business contacts, so feel free to add me on LinkedIn.
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I have been meaning to play Les Miserables! It's on my desktop but I feel like it deserves a long and quiet stretch of time, which I haven't found yet. =) I am especially interested in it because I like to see how people turn "non-gamey" material into games.